


Navigation

by Termagant (subduction)



Category: Hornblower (TV)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2007-06-18
Updated: 2007-06-18
Packaged: 2017-10-06 00:51:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,842
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/47881
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/subduction/pseuds/Termagant
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>Lieutenant Bush keeps a pot of mint in the wardroom and folds his shirts with the leaves tucked between them. Jack can smell it when he wears a clean shirt. He does not wonder whether the smell has pervaded Lieutenant Bush, whether his broad shoulders beneath the shirt would smell of mint as well.</i>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	Navigation

Jack Hammond would never confess to superstition. It is backward enough to be Irish.

Still, there are certain things which he believes.

His second day aboard the _Hotspur_, one of the hands had pulled him aside and confided a long list of things which were unlucky at sea. For the next two weeks he had worn his shirt inside out, until Matthews had noticed and set him straight. He had caught the look of pitying disdain on the bosun's face, though he'd pretended not to.

It didn't signify. Matthews was wrong about him. They all were.

Precious, his mother used to call him, and beloved. Only son, only hope. She had believed things, too: had scattered salt in his cradle, sewed cold iron into the seams of his clothing until he was far too old to be snatched by the fairies. Far too old for such baby-nonsense. He had told her so, had unpicked the stitches and discarded the weights in a fit of twelve-year-old pettishness. His sweet mother. He tries not to think of her often at sea, and never when the men might see.

Sewing was women's work and one more thing he had never learned. Orrock had taught him, his first week at sea. They had mended sail for three hours, Orrock with the easy confident rhythm with which he did everything else and Jack never quite keeping up. Afterward his hand had been clenched tight and Orrock had gently pulled his fingers straight, flexed and rubbed them for him until he could move them properly again. Orrock is helpful that way. His voice never gets low and hard and dangerous and he only shouts when he is ordering the hands about their work. He does not look at Jack with pure ice-blue contempt when he confuses the signal for "flag officer aboard" with that for quarantine. Orrock doesn't have much to say at all, but that suits Jack, and he supposes they are friends.

(After their first action Jack had finagled three iron ball bearings from somewhere, whipped them into the hems of his three white shirts with his clumsy, careening blanket-stitch. He'd had to go over the seams twice more so that they would hold, but it wasn't as though anyone would see.

He wasn't a pretty child anymore, and it wasn't the fairies he was worried about, exactly. It was just — protection.)

His mother had done a great many things his uncle the Captain called foolish. She used to tie rough wreaths of mint about Jack's wrist to guard against fever. The leaves would crush against his skin and release their sharp cool fragrance, infiltrating his clothing and his memory.

Lieutenant Bush keeps a pot of mint in the wardroom and folds his shirts with the leaves tucked between them. Jack can smell it when he wears a clean shirt. He does not wonder whether the smell has pervaded Lieutenant Bush, whether his broad shoulders beneath the shirt would smell of mint as well.

—

When they bury the dead after Jack's first battle, the older hands come up and touch the shrouded corpses: just a quick touch with two fingers and the sign of the cross. He asks Orrock about it but he does not know, and he does not dare to ask Matthews. Much later he learns that it is meant to show they are guiltless in the men's deaths. If one of them had taken the opportunity of the action to dispose of a hated shipmate, hoping it would be taken for enemy fire, the corpse was supposed to bleed through the sailcloth at the murderer's touch.

Jack has touched enough corpses for a lifetime, and has felt enough men bleed on him. He does not join in the custom.

Besides, his conscience is clean, and he need not prove that to any man.

—

The middle watch is secretly Jack's favourite, and at midnight he smartly makes his way topside and relieves Orrock with a nod.

Lieutenant Bush acknowledges his salute and gestures to the sextant beside him. "Our position and speed, if you please, Mr. Hammond." He turns back to the railing, hands clasped behind his back.

The moon is new. There is nothing to reckon with. "Sir?"

Bush does not look at him, but Jack knows obscurely that he has failed at something. He recognizes the signals by now.

"Use Spica, Hammond. You will find it in the Virgin." There is something, just the faintest edge, in his voice as he says "virgin", and Jack tells himself he has imagined it. Lieutenant Bush does not take cheap shots. Lieutenant Bush is an honourable man.

_(Holy Mary, mother of God—)_

He checks his almanac, and Bush is right, of course. Spica, the brightest star in Virgo. He sights it and brings it down to the horizon. It is not the easiest way to reckon, but Jack knows by now that even the darkness of the new moon cannot hide him from Lieutenant Bush's displeasure.

Their speed is easier. Chip log over the side, twenty-eight seconds on the glass. He chalks "eight knots" on the board before making his report. Lieutenant Bush nods and tells him to carry on.

The middle watch is secretly Jack's favourite, and this is why: the stars over the open sea are more glorious than anything he could have possibly imagined on land. They seem to hang low enough to touch, and he glances around, making sure Lieutenant Bush will not see — he would know what Jack was doing, somehow. He chooses one and concentrates, but cannot think of what to wish for.

—

Jack believes in other things as well. The resurrection of the body; a day of wrathful judgement. Uncle Hammond is a Protestant and so is Jack, officially, but every memory of his mother includes her mother-of-pearl rosary. He brought it with him to sea, wrapped in an old sock in the bottom of his trunk where no-one will look. He never takes it out. He knows the look of it well enough by now, and the feel of its smoothworn crucifix beneath his fingers.

Jack believes in sin and the real possibility of eternal damnation. He is almost resigned to the latter by now; cannot seem to escape the filth of the former. Still, he struggles upward daily.

He is not entirely aware that he murmurs the _Ave Maria_ under his breath as he wrestles by night with himself and his wretched, impure desires. Inevitably he loses: inevitably he falls, and when he gasps his pleasure into the smothering cloth of his pillow, he is not entirely aware of whose name he gasps.

_(Pray for us sinners, now and at the hour of our death. Amen.)_

He has enough of an idea, though.

—

He does not have the accent — that had been important to his uncle, too old to lose his own but determined his nephew should not bear the same fault — and so Orrock doesn't know that they are brothers in a stricter sense than that of shipmates. While the midshipmen play cards by lanternlight one evening, Orrock begins an old Irish song in his lilting tenor and Jack suddenly feels he might cry.

He would ask him to stop, but cannot think of a reason to offer if asked. Instead he goes up on deck and practices his trigonometry in the maintop. He is quicker with numbers than words, anyway. Words are troublesome; numbers never lie.

Besides, in the berth he cannot watch the sun melting into the blue-black sea, turning sky and ocean a thousand shades of scarlet and mauve as it sinks: and he cannot hear the white gulls cry as they soar overhead, or watch the hands fly about the rigging at their work, or see Lieutenant Bush on the quarterdeck, smiling at something the Captain has said.

—

He is getting better at using the sextant. He is getting better at everything, but rising to mere competence does not bring the accolades of captain and crew.

(Envy, he knows, is a sin; and Orrock is a friend.)

Still he prefers the middle watch. It is the quietest, and lets him be — lets him think: of great courageous deeds he might do someday — of winning the Captain's rare smile — of different ways to be. Of ways to be something. Of ways to be better.

Tonight he finds Spica without being told, uses it to check his reading by the moon. They agree perfectly. Tonight when he reports to Lieutenant Bush he does not stammer once, and thinks he catches a glimmer of approval when Bush says, "Carry on, Hammond."

—

On Sunday morning they are to be inspected and Jack wordlessly offers his spare shirt to Orrock, knowing that he has none clean and that he would not ask. He has forgotten the iron weight in the hem. Orrock strips unselfconsciously, and Jack is momentarily embarrassed by his tall lean nudity — and then embarrassed that he is still embarrassed. It is hardly as though modesty can stand between them now. For weeks they have watched and worked and eaten and dressed and slept together, the midshipmen, almost as one boy. One man. Jack knows without looking that Orrock's skin is tattooed with the same marks as his own: same stark lines of tan and white at wrists and neck, same chapped and callused hands. These are the marks of the service.

(He does not think of Lieutenant Bush's wrists.)

Orrock pulls the shirt on, and it falls short on him, barely covering the tops of his thighs, for he is three inches taller than Jack. He stands in nothing but the shirt, unbinds his queue and tugs a comb through his bright hair before plaiting it again and binding it with a strip of black cotton. As he is pulling his breeches on he catches the shirt-hem in his hand, feels the weight there. Jack sees the motion and blushes.

Orrock, merciful Orrock, doesn't say anything: just finishes tucking the shirt into his breeches and lays a hand on Jack's shoulder as he passes by him to go through the hatch.

The day is golden and the _Hotspur_ and her men stand proud in the morning light. The Captain stands at the quarterdeck rail and reads the Articles in a strong warm voice; his tones do not carry on the wind the way Lieutenant Bush's hoarse-shouted orders do, but most of the men know the words by now. The Captain is a grand man and Jack is pleased to see how the men look to him. He is pleased, obscurely, just to be among them: pleased to stand tall in his fine clean uniform on this fine clean deck on this fine clean morning.

Lieutenant Bush is wearing a clean shirt for the inspection, too: and when he leans in to check the state of their uniforms, Jack breathes in mint and starch and pipe tobacco, and thinks that perhaps he is learning to love the sea, as his uncle said he would.

**Author's Note:**

> Remixed: [One Faithful (The Scalene Remix)](http://archiveofourown.org/works/67777)


End file.
